In the past few years, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees have made their way into the media by mid-September. So what is the hold up this year?

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has a new director, Joel Peresman, who recently replaced Suzan Evans. There are also rumors that the 70-person nominating committee was going to have a number of new voices this year. All of this turnover has most likely led to delays in the nominations becoming finalized.

The Rock Hall never officially releases the names of the nominees (you won't find them on the Rock Hall website), but they inevitably get leaked to the media. Keep checking Future Rock Hall for the latest on the 2007 nominations.

One of the major problems that people have with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is the idea that legendary artists such as the Beatles and Rolling Stones are in the same category as lesser Hall of Famers like ZZ Top and Percy Sledge. Bill Simmons, aka the Sports Guy, recently proposed an idea for restructuring Halls of Fame, using various athletes as examples:

Halls of Fame [could be] restructured like pyramids. We'll assign each elected player to a level, with the shakiest picks (the Phil Rizzuto types) on the first floor; solid guys (the Terry Bradshaw types) on the second; no-brainers (the Wade Boggs types) on the third; defining superstars (the Tom Seaver types) on the fourth; and the pantheon guys (The Babe, MJ and the like) in the penthouse.

I once pitched this idea in a column about the Baseball Hall of Fame, but why couldn't every sport adopt it? Imagine how fun the voting would be. And how cool the buildings would look. And the goosebumps you'd get as you climbed to the next level.

It's pretty easy to see how this could be applied to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (heck, the logo for the Rock Hall is a pyramid already). Providing different levels of induction would provide a way to separate the generation defining artists from the ones that maybe sold tens of millions of albums but didn't have a lasting impact on rock and roll.